Valentine's Day -- the old fashioned way

February 13, 2006|ALI KITT Riley High School

So you're a teenager in love, and you wonder what you should do for your sweetheart this Valentine's day. Well, there are some normal options such as sending chocolates or roses. You could purchase a card that will play the cutest little song when opened. You could take your Valentine out to a fancy restaurant or have them come over to your house for a candle-lit dinner. However, if you don't want to go along with the hype, celebrate the old fashioned way. A long, long time ago, somewhere around 270 A.D., the Romans celebrated this Lupercalia festival. It began on Feb. 15, according to www.historychannel.com, and honored the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, along with the Roman god of agriculture -- Faunus. To celebrate, the Web site says, Roman priests would go to a sacred cave where the founders of Rome were supposedly raised by a she-wolf or Lupa. After entering the cave, the priests would sacrifice a goat to represent fertility and a dog to represent purification. The goat's hide was then cut into strips and dipped in sacrificial blood, the site goes on to say. The priests then went around slapping women and crops with the bloody meat. The women enjoyed it, believe it or not, because they believed being slapped by the hide would make them more fertile. A lottery of the women occurred after the bloody-meat slapping, according to the Web site. The younger women of the city would put their names in an urn, and the bachelors of the city would pick out a girl who would become their lover for the rest of the year. Pope Gelasius wasn't too thrilled about the whole woman lottery. He figured a new holiday could be celebrated in place of the Lupercalia festival, one that would be more Christian, according to http://wilstar.net/holidays/valentn.htm. February seemed to be the bird's mating season, so the holiday would be for love. The site goes on to say that the pope had to choose a saint that could be honored on a day of loving. He picked St. Valentine who was beheaded by Emperor Claudius. Claudius wasn't very nice at all, the site says. He was a ruler and he loved the power he had. He wanted a big army with killing-machine soldiers, and he believed that married men would not make good soldiers at all. He banned marriage, and that made lots of people angry. So Valentine was basically like, "Hey everyone, I'll marry you and Claudius will never know!" Claudius found out, of course, and had Valentine put in jail. While in jail, according to the site, Valentine met the girl of his dreams and fell in love. According to the site, some say that before he was beheaded, he wrote her a love letter, or a farewell, that was signed, "From your Valentine."